Animal School

Excerpt from "Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life" by Charles Swidoll as read in "Leadership Gold" by John Maxwell.

Once upon a time, the animals decided they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of the new world. So they organized a school.

They adopted an activity curriculem of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make it easier to administer, all the animals to all the subjects.

The duck was excellant in swimming. In fact, he was better than his instructor was! However, he only made passing grades in flying, and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to almost completely stop swimming and stay after school to practise running. This caused his webbed feet to be so badly worn so he became only average in swimming. But average was quite acceptable, therefore noone worried about it-except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because he had so much makeup work to do in swimming.

The squirrel was excellant in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the thr treetop down. He developed charley horses for overexertion, so he only got a C in climbing and a D in running.

The eagle was a problem child and was severly disciplined for being a non-conformist, he beat all the others to the top, but insisted on using his own way of getting there!